Israel’s deadly air strikes on Gaza

While Gazan medics say they are having difficulty treating the injured, aid organizations say they cannot get basic supplies to the region.

At least 34 people were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a five-storey residential block in Beit Lahia earlier this week, the local civil defense agency said.

According to the AFP news agency, the agency said that most of the dead were women and children.

Israel’s ground offensive in northern Gaza has displaced some 130,000 people in the past five weeks.

The UN says 75,000 people remain under siege in the towns of Beit Lahia, Jabalia and Beit Hanoun as water and food supplies dwindle.

Israel committed war crimes and crimes against humanity by deliberately causing the mass displacement of Palestinians in Gaza, Human Rights Watch said in its report last week.

According to the UN, nearly 1.9 million people (90% of Gaza’s population) fled their homes last year, and 79% of the area is under evacuation orders issued by Israel.

Israel launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to the group’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, in which approximately 1,200 people were killed and 251 people were taken hostage.

Since then, nearly 44,000 people have been killed and more than 104,000 injured in Gaza, according to the region’s Hamas-run health ministry.

On Wednesday, the United States blocked the Gaza ceasefire bill in the UN Security Council; This was the fourth time he used his veto power to protect his ally Israel during the conflict.

14 of the Council’s 15 members voted in favor of the bill, which calls for an “immediate, unconditional and permanent end to the war in Gaza and the immediate and unconditional release of all remaining hostages.”

US Deputy Ambassador to the UN Robert Wood said the document “abandoned” the requirement that there be “a connection between the ceasefire and the release of the hostages”.

Wood said the proposed resolution would send a “dangerous message” to Hamas.

In a separate development, US mediator Amos Hochstein arrived in Israel from Beirut.

He said he saw a “real opportunity” to end the conflict in Lebanon after the Lebanese government and Hezbollah largely accepted the US ceasefire proposal.